The European Food Import Safety Regime Under a 'Stress Test': The Melamine Contamination of the Global Food Supply Chain

Alberto Alemanno
Additional contact information
Alberto Alemanno: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Ensuring that European food imports are safe presents special challenges, as production takes place in third countries outside the direct control of the member states. Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, besides a few exceptions regarding high-risk products (such as animals and animal products), the regulation of food import safety in the European Union (EU) is not the focus of direct legislative attention. As a result, the safety of food imports in Europe is pursued not through the application of special conditions governing the import of third-country products, which would impose systematic and Herculean checks at the external borders, but rather through the decentralised enforcement by member states' market surveillance authorities of a harmonised set of product safety regulations: the European food safety acquis. This article provides a critical analysis of this regime by choosing as a case study the recent melamine dairy scandal. Although representing one of the most challenging food contaminations the world has ever faced, the melamine dairy scandal did not produce any tangible negative health effects on the European population. By examining in detail the main features and mechanisms of the EU food safety regime, with a particular focus on the rapid alert system (RASFF), this article assesses to what extent this outcome can be ascribed to the European regulatory framework or to other factors.

Keywords: European Food; Import Safety Regime; Stress Test; Melamine Contamination; Global Food Supply Chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Erasmus Law Review, 2010, 3 (4), pp.203-215

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00610127

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().